Today's user interfaces are increasingly graphic-intensive. For example, Internet browsers are used to view web sites, which are becoming heavily augmented with supplementary graphics, such as advertisements, banners, pictures, and the like. When an individual who is “surfing the web” selects a frame on a web page to be printed, the current Internet browsers print the entire frame, including all of the content (i.e., text, graphics, and the like) therein. In many instances, the user is not interested in all of the contents shown on the web page. Therefore, the user may be inundated with undesirable content.
Furthermore, there are extraneous financial and time costs for printing undesirable content such as graphics. For example, the printing of graphics on a web page takes additional time, as well as utilizing extra paper and toner or ink from the printer to complete the print job.
The impact of printing undesirable content is considerable. For example, in the year 2000, there were an estimated 219 million ink jet printers and 200 million laser printers worldwide. Revenues for ink jet cartridges are expected to continue at a double-digit growth rate for the next five years. Moreover, revenues in the year 2000 for ink jet cartridges were $13.9B, while $8.5B for toner cartridges. As usage of the Internet and graphical interfaces grows worldwide, the printing of such undesired content becomes a wasteful consumption of the print medium materials, such as ink cartridges, toner cartridges, paper, and the like, which increases the overall costs of printing.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for controlling printable content from web pages and other graphic intensive subject matter.